I remember

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9-11-01 - 21 years old

Ugh, I was so annoyed this morning when *** woke me up! "Dude, have you seen what's on TV, the twin towers just got hit"......You just woke me up, do you think I've seen what's on TV? As I pulled myself out of bed, and onto the couch, I watched as an airplane ran into the second of the twin towers, it was unreal. Watching it, this morning it seemed to be just an accident, but how could someone accidently run into a building?

I was running late for class as usual, and hurried to get there, my morning class ended up being canceled, most of the music students sat in the fine arts building watching the news. They described some kind of planned attack with two planes that hit the twin towers, one that hit the pentagon........So weird! I watched for a little over an hour, the whole time being so thankful that something like this didn't happen while we were in Europe this summer, how scary would that have been to be stuck and unable to come home?!? All of the air space around the US is shut down, and no commercial flights are going to happen, I don't know how long.

Then Dr. ****** showed up, because nothing should get in the way of form & analysis...blah, blah, blah!!! So I stopped watching and went to class. When I was done with class, we still had marching band rehearsal also, at first I was super annoyed, doesn't he know that some crazy person just ran into the twin towers?

We got to Holt Arena, and Simons just talked to us for a bit. He told us, it seems like the world should stop while we mourn and figure out how to keep going but it won't, and we need to be part of the healing. We have a job to do, now lets do it. We were a band, and because they were still planning to play the football game on Saturday, we needed to give people some kind of continuity. Are we sad? Yes. Are we confused? Yes. Are we scared? Yes But we can be one thing that stays the same for people, on Saturday, we can make them feel good, patriotic. And then we rehearsed, I think we're going to end up changing our show on Saturday to a patriotic half time performance, hopefully it will be cool.

When I was in Educ. 204, she talked a lot about how you would deal with a scenario like this if we were actually in the classroom right now. How would we create some kind of normalcy/safe place for those kids, when something so huge was happening in the world. The needs would be different for every student, but it is important to make the students feel safe when they are here.

I should have apologized to *** for being so annoyed at her for waking me up...... But I guess it's hard to process such a monumental change in the universe that happened while I was sleeping.

10 years later

I remember!

I remember how scared I felt as I progressed through my day, and learned more and more information. I remember how thankful I was that I was not still in Europe on our Jazz Band Tour, I had lost a lot of cash while I was there, and I was super panicky for the rest of the trip that I was going to run out of money. As I watched the events of the day unfold, that panicky, unsettled feeling returned, why would someone do that do our country? I don't think I really understood the whole terrorist attack thing until several days after, when the only thing on any news channel was some how related to 9/11.

Now even 10 years later, the thing that has stuck with me the most was what Chad Simons talked about. There are times when we have a job to do. It may be physically or mostly emotionally hard, but when it comes down to it sometimes we need to be there for others, even when it is hard for us. We can be the person that can make a difference for another.

I remember how in the months following the attacks how nice it felt to feel so united as a country, we were almost truly as one, and now 10 years later how divided it feels. Was this the catalyst? Would we still feel the division, or would it just have taken longer to get there? I am somewhat optimistic that we as a people will return to using common sense, treat others with kindness and like we would like to be treated. I am thankful for the beautiful country we live in. I wonder how I will describe to my own children the heinous acts that happened that day, and how it made me feel, and how it changed the world that they are growing up in.

I am thankful for an opportunity to reflect.

What were you doing?

I remember.